Who will manage the unintended consequences of labor optimization that is aided by machine learning and other forms of artificial intelligence?

Workday is one of the vendors that has taken the Capitol Hill dialogue beyond the concerns of the consumer tech players – and into the enterprise domain. But Den wonders if we’ve taken this far enough:

The fact Workday has turned up on Capitol Hill and is making the case for business algorithms and systems to be considered separately from the consumer Internet is a good thing. But is the work that companies like Workday are doing going to help make the world a better place for the humans they help manage or will the optimization algorithms serve to undermine the workplace?

That’s a question all vendors – particularly HR vendors – are going to need to grapple with, as the lines between economic/political issues and enterprise business-as-usual continue to blur. AI techno-optimism is one way forward – but not mine. Dialogue and research? Bring it on.

Diginomica picks – my top two stories on diginomica this week

Retail pre-holiday blowout with Stuart – Stuart went on a shopping, err, analysis binge this week, with retail sector features like this use case: Re-inventing the customer support experience at Best Buy. Not sure I want a “stickier” relationship with Best Buy but moving on, check the demographic targeting in A&F – getting close to the 18-34 demographic via digital. (Sidenote: guess I won’t be hearing from A&F anytime soon). Meanwhile Target plans to fulfill 80 percent of its holiday shipping via storefronts (cool that brands are finally figuring out that stores are actually pretty handy sometimes).

Best of the rest

So I’m about to board a long-ass transatlantic flight, and on the other side is Thanksgiving. That means I might not have time to add the best from the web before I board. I’ll add what I can here, but if you don’t see much, that’s why. I’ll make it right next time.

Whiffs

I was running a bit low on whiffs for once; leave it to Uber to come through again:

Yeah, Google, so you decapitated Google Reader, you constantly mess with Gmail and Android, your search engine for your own Bookmarks has been broken for years (and I here I thought you were pretty good at search, silly me), you turned Google Drive into some kind of flying saucer that wants to upload everything on my computer and everything I stick into it, Google Play Music makes iTunes seem like really incredible software – and now your minimalist dumb-it-down design Huckleberries geniuses are gonna mess with my freaking calendar? The app I rely on most to just work?

I have a wacky idea: how about deploying your design resources to Google Voice Assistant, you know, the same one that reverts my calls to speakerphone or bluetooth or wherever the freaking hell it feels like, the one that understands “let’s go home” but doesn’t ask me “would you like me to open the map?” Yeah go ahead, squander your resources on Calendar, the one app you have that completely works.

p.s. I tried “OK Google – tell your team not to change Google Calendar!” Still waiting for a reply worthy of a three-year-old…

Meetup has pulled a trick from the old ERP playbook. Revert to the prior version for missing functionality, not yet coded. Meetup organizers who pay a monthly or annual SaaS fee are using a half done redesign missing authoring functionality from the prior design. Meetup hasn’t taken a useful UX beta clue from Google by warning paying users of unfinished redesign with a beta tag.

My advice. Communicate major redesigns, don’t treat your paying or non-paying users as beta testers without warning them. Instead provide a parallel way for users to test your new version. Along with an easy way to revert back to the prior design and providing an easy way to give feedback why.

Meetup has pulled a trick from the old ERP playbook. Revert to the prior version for missing functionality, not yet coded. Meetup organizers who pay a monthly or annual SaaS fee are using a half done redesign missing authoring functionality from the prior design. Meetup hasn’t taken a useful UX beta clue from Google by warning paying users of unfinished redesign with a beta tag.

My advice. Communicate major redesigns, don’t treat your paying or non-paying users as beta testers without warning them. Instead provide a parallel way for users to test your new version. Along with an easy way to revert back to the prior design and providing an easy way to give feedback why.

Jon Reed

Clive well said – “a parallel way for users to test your new version” could save a lot of whiffs.”….It could save Google a lot of whiffs also.